The War on Drugs America

The War on Drugs America

It should be no secret that America has a serious and rapidly growing drug problem. According to a study conducted by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), about 12.7 million Americans have used some kind of illegal drug in the past month, and approximately 30 to 40 million people have altered their state of mind at least once in the past year (druglibrary.org). These startling facts should make your average straight-edged American wonder why the US government doesn’t do something about this epidemic. The truth of the matter is that, while not directly or intentionally, the government has been a major contributor to the underground drug industry’s success over the past three decades.

The first American drug law, which outlawed the smoking of opium in San Francisco, was passed in 1875. Since then, hundreds of state and federal laws have been created to prohibit the creation, use, and distribution of several different “controlled substances.” Many of these laws were established after President Richard Nixon, in June of 1971, declared drug abuse to be public enemy number one in the United States. The original purpose for the government’s focus on drug abuse was to provide new types of treatment for addicts, rather than to create laws that harshly punished them and, in turn, did nothing more than lower the quality of their lives even further. One good thing that did come about from this war was the creation of methadone treatment for heroin addicts. In 1971, the Nixon administration gave a large amount of money to help increase Dr. Robert Dupont’s.methodone treatment program in Washington D.C. In the year after the expansion of Dr. Dupont’s program, burglaries in D.C. dropped by an astonishing 41% (pbs.org). Today, methadone is still seen as the most efficient cure for heroin addiction with hundreds of clinics providing treatment worldwide.

Since its inception in the early-seventies, the funding for the War on Drugs has slowly grown to its current budget of $19,000,000,000 a year (drugsense.org). During this ongoing battle, the street price of cocaine has dropped from $50,000 per kilo to about $10,000. Once reserved for the financial elite, coke is now an affordable option for your average teenager out looking for a good time. And it’s not just cocaine; most widely-used drugs (with the exception of marijuana and heroin) have seen a dramatic drop in street price since the War on Drugs began. This tremendous deflation has come about because of a significant increase in drug production and importation in the United States. The recent rise in drug trafficking is believed to have come about because of the imprisonment and deaths of many major drug czars, such as: Pablo Escobar, Carlos Lehder, Rafael Caro Quintero, and Manuel Noriega, many of whom were brought down by the DEA. Because of the fall of these prominent drug empires, many smaller, less sophisticated drug dealers have emerged. And like any other major industry, competition creates cheaper prices.

In 2001, President Bush selected Arkansas Republican Asa Hutchinson to head the Drug Enforcement Agency. Hutchinson has been very vocal about his views on drug use in America. He has publicly stated the he supports the jailing of individuals who post information pertaining to drugs on the internet. He is also known to support the incarceration of drug offenders over treatment programs aimed at eliminating their addictions (norml.org). Is this really the type of person that should be leading America’s drug war? It should first be stated that sentencing people to jail for expressing their views, even if those views are misshapen, is completely ludicrous and goes against everything that this nation stands for. Also, in the thirty years since the War on Drugs was initiated, it has been made painfully obvious that incarcerating non-violent drug offenders does nothing more cost tax payers money, fill up our already over crowded jails, and degrade the lives of these people even further.

Many countries outside of the United States have begun to try alternatives to prosecuting drug offenders. Hong Kong for instance has an amazingly effective methadone treatment program. It is estimated that 60% of heroin users in Hong Kong have volunteered for methadone treatment in the past ten years (legco.gov).